Modelling and structural characteristics analysis of gene networks for prostate cancer

Analysing structure of gene networks is an important way to understand regulatory mechanisms of organism at the molecular level. In this work, gene mutual information networks are constructed based on gene expression profiles in prostate tissues with and without cancer. In order to contrast structural difference of normal and diseased networks, curves of four structural parameters are given with the change of thresholds. Then threshold discrimination intervals and discrimination weights are defined. A method of finding structural key genes with significant degree-difference is proposed. The finding of key genes will help the biomedical scientists to further research the pathogenesis of prostate cancer. Finally randomisation test is performed to prove that these structural parameters can distinguish normal and prostate cancer in their structures compared with these results in real data.